The Fisherman's Friends are shanty singers from Port Isaac on the Cornwall coast, who have been performing their set of shanties and Cornish Folk Songs for over 15 years. The 10-man group also travels around the UK playing at a variety of venues including theatres, festivals and portside concerts, so long serving sound technician for the Fisherman's Friends, Sam Littlechild, regularly works with the 'in house' equipment and engineer to achieve the desired final mix and monitor.
For the Wells Cathedral gig, Paul Nicholson from Midas ProSound supplied the M-480 (as well as a S-4000S-3208 Digital Snake 32 x 8 Modular Unit) convincing Littlechild - who usually prefers an analogue desk - to give the Roland digital desk a try.
"I was mightily impressed with the M-480 and found it very user friendly' commented Littlechild. "I have worked with a dozen or so digital desks before but have never felt as relaxed as I did with the M-480. The desk layout was really intuitive and I am so glad I used it."
For the Fisherman's Friends, the mix of 10 vocals with a range of baritone, bass and tenor plus the accompanying musicians can be a difficult balance, but this was achieved easily at Wells Cathedral with each different element coming across clearly. The M-480 was used to feed all the delay speakers around the 100m+ space, along with a Digital Snake S-4000S-3208 32 x 8 Modular Unit.
Describing the setup, Paul Nicholson commented, "We visited the cathedral a few weeks prior to the event to look at how best to tackle the sound distribution as we weren't allowed to lay any cables on the floor. So, we decided to use an M-480, not just because it sounds great, but because all the outputs have delays. With 8 PA sends plus 2 monitors, the M-480 coped really easily."
Four sets of APG SMX15 speakers were used for the audience (spaced approximately 12m apart and fed from above) and four APG DX12 speakers on the stage. All the signal feeds were handled by tri-Wi wireless audio routers which made the 3 hour set up window the day before the show and the get out very easy and saved taking a lot of cable into the 10m high gallery which runs either side of the Cathedral.
"The show was a great success thanks to all the linked technology, and we managed to achieve a great sound in what was a very reverberant space especially through the judicious use of the M-480's great EQ section," Nicholson added.
(Jim Evans)
